Coming soon

On why this newsletter exists

This is The Shared Sequester, a newsletter about design as it relates to systems transition, existential risk, equity, and ethics.

I’ve been meaning to self-publish on these topics for a while now, and my upcoming Fulbright grant period in Finland has proven to be a helpful catalyst. A bit about the research project “Co-Designed Artefacts: Visualizing Indigenous Perspectives on Arctic Climate Change”: I intend to study and visualize complex dynamics between Sámi communities in northern Finland and the wide range of climate change mitigation measures—such as conservation, rewilding, and geoengineering—taken on the Arctic frontlines by university scientists and public institutions. As a visiting researcher at NODUS, the sustainable design research group at Aalto University in Helsinki, I’ll ground and grow my inquiries in a community of systems design practitioners. To better represent hyperlocal realities, it’ll also be critical for me to better understand and capture the contradictions between a flattened or romanticized Western view of indigenous knowledge and the lived realities of Sámi culture and philosophy. To that end, I will be working with the transdisciplinary research group Drivers and Feedbacks of Changes in Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity (CHARTER), observing and participating in fieldwork regarding the ongoing adaptations of Sámi reindeer herding. Alongside these diverse collaborators, I’ll investigate, iterate, prototype, and socialize a set of speculative artefacts designed to tell the appropriately complex stories about systems transition in Finnish Lapland. With diverse ways of knowing and ethical co-design top of mind, I’ll prioritize elevating Sámi perspectives and ask: How can participatory design research and creative physical fabrication capture/convey the complex narratives of circumpolar climate change and the socioeconomic power dynamics of Arctic governance? Shared with public officials and local Finns through print and online publication, might those artefacts and their stories inform or inspire more conscientious policymaking at regional and national levels?

The word intend is doing a lot of work here. We’ll see where this goes! I leave for Finland in August for a 10-month stint. Follow along if you’re as curious as I am about how the necessarily messy process of co-design will unfold.